JimBlog

I had one....hated it.

Dull, lifeless and very dark sounding.

I bough a new stylus for is too.

Put me off shure carts for life.

Excellent write up James , and one I've been waiting for , as you know . I'm in the same position as you with a GL75 fitted with an AT95ex . I also have an M55e which requires a stylus so have a decision to make regarding the Jico stylus .

I will have to have a think about that but thanks for the write up mate 

The M55e / Jico stylus simply gets better and better the more hours I put on it. I think it has reached the limit of its run in period and has developed a really nice soundstage with excellent depth. Detail and overall clarity have also gone up a notch. I am very impressed with this Jico stylus and it has exceeded expectation.

Tonight as I listen to the superbly recorded Myopia from Agnes Obel, her vocals are sublime and the multilayering in the recordings is excellent. She has used a lot more perspective and depth in the material on this album so it has a vast spacious feel. I am missing absolutely nothing with this stylus.

To be honest I thought the At95ex was going to be hard to beat but this Jico M55e has knocked it out the ring!

Happy vinyl listening.

Nearly six months now since my Croft /VPI / 2M Black / Spendor SP2 system was in action but curiously having been listening to the retro system I put together recently Lenco GL75/ M55e / Pioneer SX 590 and Celestian DL6 speakers I am beginning to wonder if the gap in sound quality is really that large. My Croft system is highyly resolving and very transparent and my memory does tell me it has the edge but listening to the Lenco system really has me thinking how much am I missing?

If I had put this system together when I first went back into vinyl I would have been more than happy with the result. Yes I can hear the limits of the system but they are tolerable. Having put the Shure M55e into the system has definitely given a boost to overall sound quality and performance. It is a very satisfying cartridge to listen too and just shows how important this fundamental transducer plays in delivering sound quality that elevates your system from the ordinary to something that gives it those special qualities your are looking for in music reproduction namely detail, transparency, a connection with the performance / instrument / vocalist and as I have written before a fundamental enjoyment of the musical performance.

When I lift the record off the platter I mutter to my self.. well that was f£*@ng great! This surely is the sign that a system is delivering a performance that keeps you wanting to listen and thoroughly enjoy music.

So maybe in the next few months as a lot of things are happening i will soon be able to lash the VPI / Croft system back together and learn the truth of just how far I think my current system has taken me or how close it is to the memory of my so called 'Audiophile' system.

I have nothing else to mess with on the Hifi front until the next chapter of my life starts!

£400 is a very good price you've paid. The beauty of the cheap chinese system is that you can tweak to your hearts content and only pay pennies or recycle old equipment for upgrades. It's then easy to see how each "tweak" has improved the system (not that won't be hard)!!

Sorry not been contributing much to the site recently as I have been busy sorting out purchase of new house and finding somewhere with a suitable room to put my system in.

After many months without my hifi system up and running I am nearing lift off again. Hope it all still works although the actual first switch on might be still be a month away as I need to sort out some suitable electrics first! Getting quite excited about the prospect but a bit nervous how it will sound in a new room. It is a little larger than the one I had before so I feel that the purchase of some more suitable speakers maybe in order. Cant budget for them yet but I expect they may have to be big.

In the meantime I will roll on listening to by budget vintage system which has honestly given me a lot of pleasure as i have been listening to a lot of music without getting too concerned about the hifi aspect. I think it has certainly tided me over and I have relaxed with it in a way I never quite did with my other system. This maybe telling me something.....?

I will pop one on later. 

Jim (he's posh you know!)

the listening room you have now, is probably 2.5x bigger than the one you had before lol....."a little larger" lol

Gonna nickname you "modest Jim"

It's got motorised garage doors!!! Hahaha, electrics are shocking though (pun intended)

Welcome back Jim !

We have a Victorian place.. one thing I wish I’d done is put in an Ethernet network when we had wiring work done. I’ve sort of done it after the event, but thankfully because many of the floorboards are easy to pull up.
Cheers

thanks Steve.  I am putting new electrics in so may run some Ethernet cable if i get the boards up!  

The idea being to take a separate Live, Earth and neutral off the tails entering the house, after the meter, but before the existing consumer unit. Effectively requiring two consumer units. Just one is very small. They do this frequently for Conservatories, kitchen extensions etc, because 9/10 existing consumer units are not set up for the load of more appliances. It's cheaper and easier just to add another CU.

This will completely disconnect all the noisy stuff on the main Cu, and prevent fridges, freezers, oven and pretty much everything else on the ring mains in the house from polluting the single ring main for the listening room. The only thing is, it's then nullified a little if you plug anything else in, in that room. TVs, Satelite, routers etc.

If you want the best possible results, you'd have an earth rod fitted just for that ring main too. Sound excessive, but a system can be revolutionised by having its own earth. Just a big copper steak hammered deep into the garden is all you need. It can be done.

I'm having a re-wire here in the next couple of months so have been reading up as to what is and isn't worth doing on the hi-fi side. separate run to the hi-fi, separate consumer unit and so on. On balance I don't think it is worth it. There's lot's of unsupported testimonials as to improved SQ and lots of science saying that there will be zero real effects.

I know I don't have any SQ issues in any case since I've had awesome SQ with the wirings as they are so I know there isn't any 'barrier' there.

I can understand going to all the effort and expense if you are getting interference from other equipment like lighting or refrigerators. Pops. clicks, static sounds and so on. Otherwise it would seem to be a waste of money and effort.

Even then I still thought about it just as a 'peace of mind' thing since the extra effort willbe the sparky's and a few hundred on top of a couple of grand doesn't seem outrageous cost-wise. But I'll save the couple of hundred I think as it does all seem to be another audiophle fantasy.